Bones by the Wood Read Online Free Page B

total before the next transaction and answered without looking up from the LED display.  “Yeah.  Not heard from him in a while.  Guess he found someone else.”  Thea shrugged, in what she hoped was a nonchalant manner.  “Guess I better get back to my BOB.”
     
    “Jesus, honey.  If he went lookin’ elsewhere, then he was seven kinds of stupid.”  Val was visibly mortally offended on Thea’s behalf.
     
    Thea sighed and shrugged again.  “He wouldn’t be the first one, Val.  He wouldn’t be the first.”
     
    Val gave Thea a sympathetic smile.  Thea’s shifts often followed on from Val’s.  The hours that they worked suited them both, and when they needed time off they often swapped shifts or arranged to double up to cover for each other.  They usually had the opportunity to chat as they swapped over, so Val was well versed in Thea’s love life, or generally the lack thereof, and Thea was equally well versed in Val’s trials and tribulations with her alcoholic husband, Norm.
     
    “One day, honey.  One day you’ll find Prince Charming.”
     
    “He don’t exist, Val.  He never fuckin’ did.”  Even to her own ears Thea sounded jaded and tired.
     
    “You’re too young to be this cynical, honey.”
     
    “No, Val. I’m too old to be that dumb.”
     
    Val snorted her amusement.  “Touché, honey.  I best get home or Norm’s gonna be wondering where the hell I am.  You take care, y’hear?”
     
    “Sure thing, Val.  You too.”
     
    “See you tomorrow, Thea.”  Val flung over her shoulder as she headed to the lounge.
     
    Thea smiled after Val and then settled into waiting for the next customer.  She had a couple of hours until Dwight, the boss, arrived, and then she’d find out whether he was doing the stock take or she was.
     
    She’d never had any clear idea of what she wanted to do with her life; certainly a career as a convenience store clerk hadn’t been high up on her list.  But it was a way to pay the bills.  Thea smiled a wry grin to herself as she remembered her mother’s declaration that she would end up in a dead end job. 
     
    Thea had gotten along just fine with her parents until her adolescence clashed with her mother’s menopause, resulting in some truly epic fights.  Her dad had gone into hiding from the hormones and had never re-emerged from his world of fishing and gardening.  An association with an unsuitable boyfriend had all but destroyed any hint of a relationship that Thea and her mother had left.  She’d finished high school out of sheer stubbornness, just to prove her mother wrong, and made sure that she’d maintained decent grades for the same reason.
     
    The day after graduation she’d moved in with the unsuitable boyfriend and had gotten a job in the local 7 Eleven while she figured out what to do with her life.  She didn’t have the funds to go to college.  About the same time that she’d found out that she was pregnant, she discovered that the unsuitable boyfriend’s drug habit was quite a bit more than the recreational dabbling that he’d let her think it was.  By the time their little boy was born, dealers had started knocking at their door looking for money.  She was the sole earner since the boyfriend had gotten himself fired for turning up to work stoned.  The second time that she’d found the apartment trashed, with a fucking huge turd in her baby’s crib as a finishing touch, she tried to convince her boyfriend to sort out his issues, and he’d beaten her for even suggesting it.
     
    By that point she was too embarrassed and too stubborn to go back to her parents, who would have been too horrified about a child born out of wedlock to even answer the door if she knocked, but the dealers had started threatening her personally and were making hints about the baby.  She decided pretty quickly that she wasn’t going to stick around and find out what they had in mind for the sake of someone who couldn’t even keep